by Jane Langton
“I just did,” said Fern. “But, Tom, we can’t drink it.”
“Well, I suppose not,” said Tom wistfully. “It wouldn’t taste like anything anyway, not after all these years.”
Fern was puzzled. “But why didn’t it disappear along with everything else?”
“Everything else?”
“Oh, sorry, I mean, I wonder how on earth it got there, an old bottle like that.”
“Ghostly hands,” said Tom.
That evening they celebrated in Fern’s place with a bottle of two-year-old California Chardonnay, and the next day Tom filled out an application for admission to the university. This time he wasn’t applying to the medical school, he was switching to the graduate school of education.
“My parents won’t like it,” he told Fern. “Teaching history in high school won’t put me in the upper income bracket. I doubt I’ll earn seven figures.”
“Probably not,” said Fern.
She too was going back to work. Although two members of the Grant Committee were dead, the rest gave her their blessing, and by Christmastime she was able to show them a finished draft of her book.
The task had been easier than she had expected. Even her chapter on the Sally Hemings affair was no embarrassment. It ended serenely—
However scandalous they might have seemed during Thomas Jefferson’s lifetime, a widower’s out-of-wedlock sexual relations would not be shameful now, two centuries later.
After all, his wife had died decades earlier. And Sally Hemings, however illegitimate, was his wife’s own half-sister. The two women were daughters of the same father.
In the memoir of Isaac, the Monticello slave, Sally is described as handsome. Perhaps it was love on both sides. Why can we not be grateful that Thomas Jefferson enjoyed this very ordinary human pleasure?
After finishing her book, Fern moved out of the Dome Room and set up housekeeping with Tom, camping out in the house on University Circle. There they coped happily with the exploding coffeepot, the collapsing lawn chair and the reversed hot and cold water faucets. They also cared tenderly for Doodles, the toy poodle, because the little dog had, after all, brought them together.
The owner of the house was still away. “I think he’s hunting butterflies in Costa Rica,” said Ed Bailey. “So never mind, just move right in. If he turns up, you can always leave.”
And at Monticello the tourist season was at its peak. Cars choked the parking lot, crowds of visitors were bused up the hill to the top, where they waited on the path between the hedges for their turn to climb the steps of the East Portico and enter the house.
Why did they come in such patient droves? It was not only to see the handsome house, nor to experience a surviving piece of American history. Nearly all of them felt a desire to come closer to Thomas Jefferson himself, to someone they were proud to think of—rightly or wrongly—as a very great man.
Turn the page to continue reading from the Homer Kelly Mysteries
1
On display in the Cambridge Gallery on Huron Avenue, prints by Dutch artist M. C. Escher. Hours 10—6 weekdays, 10—9 Saturday, 1—6 Sunday. Till July 1.
The Boston Phoenix
Love at first sight is folly. Usually the demented people come to their senses, but sometimes only when it’s too late.
Frieda’s and Leonard’s case was typically instantaneous and ridiculous. Strangers, they met at an exhibition of the work of the Dutch printmaker M. C. Escher.
The Cambridge gallery on Huron Avenue was not far from Leonard’s attic apartment on Sibley Road.
There were a lot of other people in the gallery. They kept flooding in the door, coming in from the rain, picking up the free pamphlet and walking slowly through the rooms, moving alone or in clusters, parting and rejoining.
Frieda and Leonard drifted together before a famous wood-engraving called A Dream. In a Gothic arcade a stone bishop lay on a sarcophagus with an enormous insect crouched upon his breast.
Leonard spoke up first. “It’s more like a nightmare than a dream.”
“Oh, yes,” said Frieda quickly. She laughed. “And such a joke.”
“Because the bug is praying. It’s a praying mantis.”
“Praying to the bishop.”
“So much for organized religion.”
They wandered together through the rest of the exhibition of Escher’s prints. Leonard was familiar with all of them, in fact they were part of his life. But instead of lecturing to Frieda he said outrageous things and made her laugh.
She was puzzled by the woodcut called Moebius Strip, a latticed figure-eight inhabited by ants. “I just don’t understand it. I mean, I’ve heard of Moebius strips, but I don’t see what’s so special about them.”
“Look.” Leonard took the gallery pamphlet, creased it sharply and tore off one edge. “You make a twist like this, then stick the ends together to make a loop. See?”
He held the strip together with ringer and thumb, then made a magical gesture with the other hand. “Presto, behold the impossible. Before the twist there were two sides. Now—here, try it. Run your finger all the way around.”
“Oh,” said Frieda, “it goes inside and outside.”
“So there’s only one surface now, not two.”
She laughed. “It’s bewitched.”
There were only forty prints in the exhibition, but they took their time. Stopping before the last one, Leonard looked at Frieda and introduced himself. “Leonard. I’m a geologist. Well, actually I’m a crystallographer.”
At once her cheerfulness faded, and she glanced away. “My name’s Frieda. I’m an artist.”
Words welled up in Leonard, questions that would have been intrusive if they weren’t suddenly so important. Where do you live? How could there be someone like you? “Are you a printmaker like Escher?”
“No, no.” She looked across the room as if searching for someone. She seemed embarrassed. “I make drawings. Faces, portraits of people.”
They turned back to the picture, a lithograph called Bond of Union. The heads of a man and woman floated in space, joined together at top and bottom like strips of a peeled orange.
Leonard said calmly, “That’s you and me.”
It was clear that he meant it. “You don’t know me,” murmured Frieda. Her jauntiness was gone.
“I know all I need to know,” said Leonard. “Except—oh, well, I suppose you’re married.”
“No. My husband died last year.”
Leonard tried to hide his pleasure. “You’re very young to be a widow.”
“Yes, I am.” Frieda made a lame joke of being pitiful. “And I was very young to be an orphan. And very much too young to be—” She broke off.
Leonard couldn’t help himself. “To be what?”
“I’m sorry.” Frieda turned and walked quickly away.
Was she crying? After a moment Leonard followed her out into the hall and waited, keeping an eye on the door where women went in and out.
He waited and waited, but she didn’t appear. He spoke to the man at the desk. “Did a woman in a green coat leave just now?”
“You mean two women together?”
“Two women? I don’t think so.”
“Well, two women in green coats left a minute ago.”
Leonard waited a little longer, surprised at the keenness of his disappointment. He didn’t even know Frieda’s last name.
People came and went. Some of them signed the visitors’ book.
The visitors’ book—Leonard crossed the hall and looked at it. There were only a few names on the page for today—
Max Rubin, Cambridge
Helen Crowley, Medfield
Mr. and Mrs. Charles Spratt, Weston
Tyler Biggy, Somerville
Isaac and Marilynne Jacob, Cambridge
Frieda was not there.
Dispirited, Leonard wrapped his checkered scarf closely around his neck and left the gallery, furious with himself. He found Huron Avenue blocked by a jack-knifed truck. Ca
rs were backing up, honking, edging around the obstruction and zooming forward in plunging splashes of foam. A few pedestrians shuffled along the sidewalk, crouching under umbrellas. One of the umbrellas blew inside-out.
There was no sign of Frieda in her green coat.
2
Ten minutes later there were a few more names in the visitors’ book, including
Mary and Homer Kelly, Concord
“You see, Homer,” said Mary, urging him along into the first room in the gallery, “this is why we need to move to Cambridge. Cultural events like this.”
“What about the river?” said Homer grumpily. “The river’s a cultural event. It goes on all the time.”
“Oh, Homer, you can’t possibly miss the river. Think of last February! Remember how often we had to make four tries to get a car up that icy river bank?”
“Well, that’s true,” admitted Homer. He cheered up. “Say, look at that. A Moebius strip. Look at the way it twists around on itself. See?”
“Twists around on itself?”
“Don’t you know about Moebius strips? Good grief, Mary Kelly, you were an educated woman. Wait a sec. I’ll show you how they work.”
Homer pawed in his pocket, extracted a Cambridge parking ticket, tore a strip off the edge and demonstrated the strange properties of a Moebius strip.
“Good heavens,” said Mary. “How can there be such a thing?”
“Don’t we look like twins in our green coats?”
“Won’t you take yours off and stay awhile—Cousin Kitty?”
“No, no, I have to go. That button, dear. Your coat has lost a button. Where is it? You should sew it back on.”
“It fell off somewhere. It doesn’t matter.”
“Tell me, dear, who was that? That man you were talking to?”
“In the gallery? His name’s Leonard. He’s a crystallographer.”
“Leonard what?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, it’s too bad. You know, dear, you’ve got to take an interest. It’s been a year now since Tom died. I thought this man looked quite nice. He’s a good deal older than you, I think, but then you’re not getting any younger. Did you like him?”
“Yes, I did,” said Frieda impulsively. She looked defiant. “I liked him very much.”
“Well, then, why didn’t you—? Do you know where he lives?”
“No, I told you. I don’t know anything about him.”
Kitty said goodbye, and went away satisfied. This little romance was going nowhere. And the girl was so plain. It was a wonder she’d landed a husband at all. That little episode had been an unexpected blow.
Downstairs Kitty paused as the landlord came banging in from outdoors and shook out his umbrella, flinging raindrops in all directions. At once his wife popped out into the hall and said tartly, “There’s some woman on the phone.”
“Oh?” The landlord grinned, pulled off his sopping raincoat and hurried into the apartment. His wife slammed the door behind him with great force.
Kitty shuddered, then turned to the mirror on the wall beside Mr. Larkin’s door and smiled at her reflection. If she and Frieda were twins in their green coats, it was obvious which was the pretty one.
Left alone upstairs, Frieda looked out the window at the homely three-deckers on the other side of the street. The pavement was shining, the parked cars gleamed, rainwater dripped from the chain-link fence.
She took a sheet of paper from her work table and cut a long narrow piece with a pair of scissors. Then she twisted it and taped the ends together.
There, look at that—it was a Moebius strip, just like Leonard’s.
3
Leonard Sheldrake had found a problem for his students in Elementary Crystallography—
There was once a king with five sons. In his will he ordered his kingdom to be divided among them into five regions, each bounded by the other Jour. Can the terms of the will be satisfied?
The problem had been posed in the year 1840 by mathematician August Ferdinand Moebius. Leonard made twenty-three copies and slapped them into a folder. Then he walked to the window, stepping carefully around the bucket that was collecting drips of rain from a leak in the roof.
The storm was over and the sun was out, going down in a flare of red above the splendid chimneys of the house next door. Leonard enjoyed the way the complex rooftops of the houses on Sibley Road had classic crystalline shapes—they were cuboid, pyramidal, prismatic. He watched as a ragged flight of birds burst into view, flapping hard and fast in the direction of the sunset. Like volunteer firemen, thought Leonard, pulling on their pants and racing to a conflagration on the western horizon.
It occurred to him that the sun was setting right now over the entire eastern seaboard of the United States, including the unknown place where the woman called Frieda was standing at this moment, or sitting or walking or talking or eating or sleeping.
There was a draft around the frame of the window. Leonard stuffed the gap with a sock.
He didn’t mind the bucket and the sock. He felt lucky to have stumbled on this place. The house was rundown, but it had an august address. Sibley Road and the parallel streets between Huron Avenue and Brattle were part of the most fashionable neighborhood in the city of Cambridge.
The privilege of living here had been like a Boy Scout’s reward. He had helped an old woman cross the street.
There she had been, old Mrs. Winthrop, frozen with fear in the middle of the dangerous intersection of Brattle Street and Fresh Pond Parkway, with cars honking at her from three directions. Leonard had run out and helped her to the sidewalk, and then because she had seemed so feeble he had walked her home, helped her up the porch steps and saved her from tripping over the head of a wild beast as she stepped into her front hall.
The head was attached to a tigerskin rug. “Oh, dear,” whispered the old lady. “I always forget.” She sagged against a totem pole.
Leonard was charmed by the clutter of objects in the dark entry. Spears and primitive musical instruments hung from the ceiling. There was a shimmer of gleaming brass—a hookah, huge trays from Benares. Politely he said, “Wouldn’t you like to sit down?”
“No, no, I’m quite all right.” The old woman’s cheeks were no longer gray with fatigue. She stood upright and beamed at him. “I want to show you something.”
Taking his arm she led him across the hall and pointed to a framed photograph on the wall above a bulky handplow from Azerbaijan. “My husband Zachariah among the Zulus.”
Leonard looked respectfully at the painted tribesmen and the imposing figure of a bearded white man. He had seen the picture before. It celebrated some important moment in anthropological history.
Struck by an idea, he turned to her. “Oh, ma’am, I don’t suppose you have a room for rent?”
Her rosy face fell, and she shook her head sadly. “Oh, dear me, no. I’m terribly sorry.”
And Leonard had murmured, “Well, never mind,” and thanked her, and opened the front door and closed it behind him and started down the porch steps.
But then she had opened the door and called after him, “Well, of course there’s the attic!”
A stellar dodecahedron is placed in the centre and is enclosed by a translucent sphere like a soap bubble. This symbol of order and beauty reflects the chaos in the shape of a heterogeneous collection of all sorts of useless, broken and crumpled objects.
M. C. Escher
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Grateful acknowledgemtn is made for permission to reprint excerpts from The Field Notes of Captain William Clark, 1803–1805, edited by Ernest Staples Osgood, Yale University Press, 1964
copyright © 2001 by Jane Langton
978-1-4532-4757-0
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